In Australian Patents 493,435 and 573,024 there are shown two previous forms of display systems which are of a similar type as the present invention. In these two patents (and the present invention) the displays rely on a process known in psycho-physics as "the beta effect". Basically, the beta effect is that the human visual system (which is a combination of the eyes and the brain) relies upon integrals of light images over time rather than instantaneous light images and hence the human visual system has the capacity to "fill in" missing information. Hence, the human visual system can resolve a given resolution in an image which has a large part of the image missing (such as up to about 90% of the image missing)--provided the image is moving.
In Patents 493,435 and 573,024 this effect was used to reduce the number of pixels required to provide a given resolution of moving image. However, both of these prior art displays rely upon columns which are spaced relatively far apart. A result of this is that at slower rates of data transmission across the display the viewer becomes aware that there are vertical black bands in the resultant image. This also manifests as flicker.
We have found that these problems can be overcome by taking the pixels in the columns and distributing the pixels over the area which in the Patents 493,435 and 573,024 were blank.
A comparison of these 3 systems is shown in FIGS. 1.1.1 to 1.3.4. These Figures show that a static graphic in the systems of Patents 493,435 and 573,024 is virtually unrecognisable and a moving graphic in the same systems experiences flicker. Whereas the same graphics, on the system of the present invention, are recognisable (for static graphics) and free of flicker (for moving graphics). Each system has the same number of pixels, but in the present invention the pixels are distributed over the area between the adjacent columns of the previous systems (that is, distributed over the picture cell). Also, the two previous systems are not able to show a graphic moving in a vertical direction.
In FIGS. 2.1 to 2.12 there is shown a comparison of the display system of the present invention (upper third of each Figure) with those of a full matrix display system (middle third of each Figure) and either of the systems of Patents 493,435 and 573,024 (lower third of each Figure). It can be seen that the full matrix display and the display system of the present invention both show a ball rising and falling. If the 12 Figures could be overlayed it would also be seen that the display system of the present invention shows the motion of the ball at substantially the same resolution as that of the full matrix display. In contrast the display systems of 493,435 and 573,024 show only 2 or 3 line segments rising and falling over the display.
Hence, the display system of the present invention has the same number of pixels as the systems of 493,435 and 573,024 but distributed across the picture cell to provide a display which has better resolution and is able to show graphics with vertical, as well as horizontal, components of movement and is able to show both moving and static graphics in a way that the entire graphic can be interpreted by a viewer of the display.